d creature: yet did not all this suffice
so extravagant a woman, who was a slave to her lusts, but she still
imagined that she wanted every thing she could think of, and did her
utmost to gain it; for which reason she hurried Antony on perpetually to
deprive others of their dominions, and give them to her. And as she went
over Syria with him, she contrived to get it into her possession; so
he slew Lysanias, the son of Ptolemy, accusing him of his bringing the
Parthians upon those countries. She also petitioned Antony to give
her Judea and Arabia; and, in order thereto, desired him to take these
countries away from their present governors. As for Antony, he was
so entirely overcome by this woman, that one would not think her
conversation only could do it, but that he was some way or other
bewitched to do whatsoever she would have him; yet did the grossest
parts of her injustice make him so ashamed, that he would not always
hearken to her to do those flagrant enormities she would have persuaded
him to. That therefore he might not totally deny her, nor, by doing
every thing which she enjoined him, appear openly to be an ill man,
he took some parts of each of those countries away from their former
governors, and gave them to her. Thus he gave her the cities that were
within the river Eleutherus, as far as Egypt, excepting Tyre and Sidon,
which he knew to have been free cities from their ancestors, although
she pressed him very often to bestow those on her also.

2. When Cleopatra had obtained thus much, and had accompanied Antony in
his expedition to Armenia as far as Euphrates, she returned back, and
came to Apamia and Damascus, and passed on to Judea, where Herod met
her, and farmed of her parts of Arabia, and those revenues that came to
her from the region about Jericho. This country bears that balsam, which
is the most precious drug that is there, and grows there alone. The
place bears also palm trees, both many in number, and those excellent
in their kind. When she was there, and was very often with Herod, she
endeavored to have criminal conversation with the king; nor did she
affect secrecy in the indulgence of such sort of pleasures; and perhaps
she had in some measure a passion of love to him; or rather, what is
most probable, she laid a treacherous snare for him, by aiming to obtain
such adulterous conversation from him: however, upon the whole, she
seemed overcome with love to him. Now Herod had a great while borne